


Partners

by lasergirl



Category: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-02
Updated: 2010-04-02
Packaged: 2017-10-08 15:06:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/76892
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lasergirl/pseuds/lasergirl





	Partners

_**FIC: Partners**_  
**Title:** Partners  
**Fandom:** _Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang_  
**Rating:** Mature (mild m/m)  
**Pairing:** Harry/Perry  
**Warnings:** Killing, swearing, boykissing.  
**Notes:** Written for (and x-posted to) the [](http://community.livejournal.com/kkissbbang/profile)[**kkissbbang**](http://community.livejournal.com/kkissbbang/) weekend ficathon. After Perry's hit over the head, Harry learns more than he wanted to know about his boss.  
**Inspiration:** The line that always grabs me when I watch this movie is Perry's "I'm not a nice man, Harry." I just wanted to get to the bottom of it all.

Most of the time Perry introduces me as his 'associate from back East" like we're actual, you know, partners. It sounds good when he says it, too, because he's got this way of talking that'd sell ice cubes to Eskimos. (Wait, is that politically correct? Fucked if I know. Anyway.)

One thing I learned from Perry is that when you're trying to make a good impression on someone, the last thing you want to do is tell the truth. Or at least, you want to avoid sounding like you spent time in jail, that you steal shit for a living, that kind of thing. He's got it down. The smooth talk, the feigned interest in the cases (I mean, I can only assumed it's feigned - and yeah, I know what that word means, thank you asshole - when I'm taking notes about some old granny's missing cat she's sure the mob put a hit out on). Nobody can bullshit the way Perry can, and I think the clients appreciate that. Everyone likes to feel that they're needed. Or something.

But the reason I bring this up is because one: I'm not good at it, at least as far as Perry's told me, which most of the time is "shut up, idiot," and two: he's so fucking good at it you'd never know what was underneath. I mean, sure, everyone knows he's gay, but it's not, like, on his calling cards or anything. (Jesus, do people even have calling cards anymore? Mental note: check to see if people still use calling cards.)

Because I'm sure the average prospective employer would take a look at the offices and the tastefully framed photographs on the wall and lap up any bullshit Perry lays down about working hard for the client's money, protecting anonymity, that sort of thing. Personally, if I were hiring a private detective I wouldn't go with anyone else, even if they were heavier in the loafers.

But also, I know Perry, and even though he's not exactly friendly to me a lot of the time, I have gotten to know a bit about him because I work for the guy. Oh, and also, I used to be a thief. See, it comes in handy to know how to crack a safe sometimes. It's twice as useful when it's your boss who's trying to hide shit from you but he's dumb enough to leave it in the safe when you're covering the phones and he's on a job. I'm just saying.

I meant to tell Perry that, honestly, that if some petty crook walked in off the street and got through the four different locks on our doors, that they might be able to open the safe and read whatever they wanted. I meant to tell him, but I sort of forgot on account of one night I was covering the phones while he was on surveillance and some junky crackhead tried to boost his car while he was still in it. I am good for a few things (Perry will argue with you on this) but I know how to dial 9-1-1 even if I get the address wrong the first time. (It was Mason, not Main Street, but how was I supposed to know where the hell he was? He doesn't tell me anything.)

I hightailed it to the hospital as soon as I put all his papers back in the safe in the order I found them, and he wasn't really that glad to see me. Considering I dropped what I was doing on a moment's notice, he could have been a little more receptive.

"What the hell are you doing here, you're supposed to be at the office!" He was laying back on an emergency room gurney getting the cut on the side of his head sewn up. The attempted carjacker hadn't known what he was messing with. Perry's the most hard-headed man I know. And please, don't make any penis jokes when I say that, alright? He's stubborn. Get over it.

"Harry Lockhart always delivers," I told him. "Oh he of little faith."

"That's 'ye.' Idiot." Getting knocked on the head with the butt of a .45 hadn't really improved his mood much. Really? For all the gay guys I know, he's the least gay. And that's in the 1920's sense, too, as in 'happy' not as in.... you know.... gay. "The phrase is 'oh ye of little faith,' Harry, and it doesn't really apply to this situation."

"Why not? You didn't think I'd call the cops, did you? Didn't I save your ass?"

"Sure," Perry groaned. He didn't look so hot. "I only had to explain to them eight times what I was doing sitting in my car on a street corner in a bad neighborhood. That I wasn't trying to pick up hookers or buy coke. I showed them my license and then they thought maybe they'd drive me to the hospital and get this looked at."

I looked. The gash on his head was pretty bloody, but then I hear most head wounds are, and there was a little patch of hair missing around where the trauma intern was putting stitches. "It's a little crooked, but you should heal okay."

"What, are you a doctor now? Shut up, Harry. This is all your fault."

"It's my fault? It'd be my fault if I'd been the one who clubbed you over the head in the first place. There's no way you can blame this on me."

He thought about it for a minute, the time it took for the intern to place the last stitch and wipe him down. I thought he'd say something nice. I don't know why I ever think that. "Seriously. What are you doing here?"

"I came to drive you. You're concussed, you've lost a lot of blood - and by the way, it's never gonna come out of that shirt - it's been a long night and I figured I should drive you home." He stared at me. "What?"

"Attempted carjacking," he said sourly. "Attempted. The car's fine. You didn't drive over here, did you? Tell me you took a cab."

I'm not an idiot. I know when to tell little white lies to Perry. "Don't worry, I took a cab here. Let's go."

I guess Perry was in worse shape than he thought, because he didn't criticize my driving the whole way, and it was a long drive. I am also a bit of an erratic driver, if you hadn't already noticed, and I hate driving in LA. I never know where any of the freeway exits go to and I'm always cutting someone off. A gold Escalade was blaring its horn at us when we got off the freeway only two exits past where Perry lived, but he didn't even seem to notice. He just leaned against the passenger door and watched the wrong neighborhood as we drove back five miles to the right one. He let me get out first and drag him out of the car. (He's just as heavy as he looks, by the way, if you were wondering. Which I know at least two of you are.)

"Come on, Perry, work with me here." I think he might have smiled when I got the house keys out of his pocket, I'm not sure, but he does stuff like that sometimes just to remind you how gay he is. It's like a pissing contest that I always lose. How am I gonna win? Fag vs. New Yorker. You'd think I had the upper hand but somehow I never do.

So I got him inside and all tucked up cosy in bed, and before you think this is some perverted domestic scene, I'll have you know I refused to undress him before I put him there. (Well, I took his shoes off because he'd have killed me if I'd put him to bed with $900 shoes in Egyptian cotton sheets, concussion or not.) Perry and me are close, but we aren't that close.

I was going to leave him to sleep off the headache and the novocaine, but as I went to turn off the light, he sort of rolled over and said "Harry?"

I stopped in the doorway and looked back at him. It was probably the only time he didn't look tough, all tangled up in his blankets and his hair sticking up funny. "Yeah?

"I didn't mean it. It's not your fault. I shouldn't have had the window down that far." He sounded a little goofy, because since when does Perry apologize to me for anything? I'm the go-to-guy when he needs someone to blame and I'd never, ever known him to take an insult back.

"I'd gloat right now but it's a small victory," I shot back at him. "What brought that on?"

"Can't a guy apologize for something?"

"In this case, no. I would have much rather gotten an apology for the kissing we did last December. But I'm still waiting on that." In fact, I'm pretty sure Perry's got that one chalked up on his list of stolen moments together. (Aside from the time we were in that supply closet. And the time I had electricity running through my balls. Come to think of it, I think last December was pretty much the gayest month I've ever had in my life. Until Perry decided to up the ante.)

"You're wasting your time on that one," he sighed. We've had that conversation so many times it's like a code word with us. You know, he'll call and say 'the ice is in the hen-house' and I'll have to go 'red fox tango Chicago' and after he knows it's me, he'll ask for messages and I'll go 'remember that time you kissed me three feet away from a corpse?' Perry convinced I'm obsessed about that kiss but really, no, it was a kiss, I just like to keep him on his toes. Like now.

But there was something else going on with Perry then, and I wasn't so sure I knew what it was. There's only so much prying a guy can do, after all. I can crack a safe, but I sure as hell don't know anything about gay men. There have been days when he's been furious at me for something I did. There was that one time I nearly shot him when I was cleaning his gun at my desk, but I just ended up shooting out some sort of designer lamp instead, and he wasn't any meaner than usual to me, except he did lock me in the john for four hours while he cleaned up the mess.

"So spill." Sure, then, I could call his bluff if he wasn't going to. "There's more to this than you leaving your car window down and getting clubbed. What is it?"

"It's..." I have to hand it to him, he's good at being tough. But he sucks at being honest, too, which hurts his overall point average. "Thank you." Sounded like he'd rather have ripped a lung out than say that, but he said it all the same. "Thanks for calling the police, and thanks for driving me home tonight. I'm not going to say it was nice, but I appreciate it."

I grinned to hear him say that, and I would have had a comment to make, but he wasn't done talking.

"I know I've been pretty hard on you, Harry. I'm so used to working alone that I forget what it's like when there's someone around."

Oh, go on, Perry, you big softie, I couldn't wait to see where this was headed, because if he didn't whip out a hankie and start blubbering then it would all have been in vain. And, truth be told, he did sound a little moist around the gills.

Remember when I said I might have checked inside Perry's safe when he was out on a job and I was stuck back in the office? Well, I might have. And in doing so, I might have come across a few papers in there that I found interesting.

For example, this might not come as much of a surprise to you, but he started off in the military. Six years! There's a paper to prove it, saying he's been to a bunch of dangerous places I'm pretty sure the U.S. never sent people to, and he's got some medals stashed along with it. That would have been my first clue, if I didn't know Perry, that he was a badass.

There was this other paper at the bottom of the safe, under a stack of legal mumbo-jumbo, that had "Van Shrike and Sterling" at the top of it. No Centron Inc, no "Van Shrike, L.A.P.I., no "Gay Perry," just that "and Sterling" which got my interest right away. I would have looked into it more, too, but that was the time I had to call in a fake bomb threat to get Perry's stakeout building evacuated so he could get good head shots of his mark. It slipped my mind until Perry started getting all mushy on me.

"I wasn't always a private detective, you know," Perry said into the darkness of his bedroom.

"That's alright. I wasn't always one either." Technically, I'm not, because Perry won't let me get a license until I've had three incident-free years, and that hasn't happened yet. "I used to be a thief. Before that, I was a magician."

I think Perry giggled at that, and that threw me off. Perry isn't really much for giggling. He's more of a sarcastic 'smile and ignore the idiot' kind of guy. I soldiered on.

"It isn't really funny. I took my partner along for one last job before Christmas - before I came out here - and I got the bastard killed." It still really burned me. If he had put the gun down when I told him to, that crazy woman would never have shot him. The gun wasn't even fucking loaded! I still send money to his girlfriend because I feel bad, but she was already sleeping around on him when it happened so I'm not even sure I should be.

Where was I?

"I used to have a partner," said Perry dreamily. Great, now I was stuck in some homo flashback romance story I couldn't escape because Perry was my boss and he'd probably fire me if I snuck away. "You might have liked him."

"Most men aren't my type," I admitted, "But I can try. Where'd he go?"

"Dead," Perry said bluntly. "Killed. Shot. In the head."

"Ouch," and I tried to make it not sound like it was a good thing, or that I was judging it, or whatever.

"I shot him." I have worked for Perry for a while now, and you'd think I'd be used to these kind of revelations but really, he doesn't reveal that much, and that one revelation sort of made up for all the months of him not revealing anything at all. I think I must have let my mouth hang open because after a minute of me thinking about the implications of his statement, he said, "Flies are getting in, Harry, stop it. Harry."

I closed my mouth, but not for long. "I just.. wow. That's quite the story there, Perry. You told anyone else? Are you going to have to kill me now that I know your secret?" What would stop him from getting out the gun I was pretty sure he kept under his pillow and silencing me with it? "Or maybe I'm supposed to turn you in. What am I supposed to say to that? 'Oh, gee, that's okay, Perry, you killed a guy, I forgive you-'"

"Shut up." Perry snapped. "It wasn't my idea. I used to... well, there was this thing I was doing in South America in the 80's. Bradley and I got into a situation."

I was trying to think of a good first name to go with 'Sterling and Bradley was definitely not it. That, and the fact that Perry said 'Bradley.' Not Brad, either, 'Bradley.' Serious. And I had no idea what was going on anymore.

"We were tortured, and after a month we were both given guns. All one of us had to do was shoot the other and we'd go free." I couldn't see Perry's face anymore because he was turned away from me. I sure hoped he wasn't crying. "If one of us killed the other, we'd get our contract money and they'd let us go. If we didn't, they'd continue to torture us, kill us and keep the money."

"What did you do?"

"My employer would have been screwed six ways from Sunday if he'd lost his mark, his money and his hit men." I was guessing where this was going and none of it could possibly be good. Perry sighed. "I could see it in his eyes. He was going to chicken out and we'd both be fucked. So I took the shot."

Yeah, I told you it wasn't going to be pretty. So that's what Perry had been carrying around with him all those years. Getting your buddy killed sucks, but I was glad it hadn't been me. For a couple of reasons, but mostly because it meant that I didn't wake up hating myself in the middle of the night like I'm sure Perry did. And I'm not really good at the whole 'comfort' thing, but I try sometimes. I went back into the bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed and patted his shoulder.

"I can't say I understand, because you're just going to hit me and call me an idiot. And I probably am, because what kind of an idiot sticks around with a guy after he just tells you something heavy like that?"

He looked at me for a moment then, and it was sort of like he was waiting for me to say that. Because after that, he sort of shut all that stuff back up inside him and then he just looked like plain old Perry again. Not crazy South American killer Perry, not 'I shot a man in Rio' Perry, it was just regular bitchy, concussed 'why are you wearing shoes in my bedroom' Perry. Which, actually:

"Are you wearing your shoes in my bedroom, Harry?"

I glanced down. "Yup."

"Goddammit, I just had the carpets cleaned!" He tried to get up but I pushed him back down. "You're tracking mud all over!"

"Calm down." I shuffled my feet out of the offending articles and picked them up. "I'm taking care of it. Just lie down and take a nap."

I carried my (non-muddy, by the way) shoes to the front entranceway, and on the way back through the house I stopped and made him some bright-orange tea that he says is too expensive to let me try, but I tried it once and it was like drinking the neighbor's hedge. (See, I was going to say 'bush' but I try to keep it classy when I'm taking about head-wounds and Perry angsting about things. You know how it is.) When I went back to the bedroom, he was watching me intently.

"You don't have to be nice to me," he said after I handed him the cup. "I'm just your paycheck."

"Bullshit," I said, "You're my employer, but you're also my friend. I think. I think we're still friends. Are we? You aren't going to have me bumped off now because of the...-"

He put a hand over my mouth. It was warm and smelled faintly of hospital antiseptic. I stopped because I didn't know what else to do, and then -

Okay. So I used to get on Perry's ass about the kissing in December because it was totally uncalled for, and even though it might have saved our butts in the long run, at the time I felt more than a little exploited. But that time in Perry's bedroom - after I was sure he didn't hate me, and wasn't going to try to have me killed - that one time, I actually didn't mind his kissing so much. It took me by surprise, because I don't normally got told to shut up so a man can plant his lips on mine. (Usually it's women. One woman, okay. Harmony had to tell me to shut up a lot because I talk so damn much that she could never find an opportunity to do the old lip lock, either. But that's beside the point.)

That one time, I didn't mind so much.

END.

p.s. I guess the moral of the story is - if there even is a moral, I wasn't really intending it to have a moral, really, it was just a thing that happened - is that it's always better to forgive and never talk about something again than it is to remember it and maybe get yourself shot?

No, that doesn't really sound right. How about that maybe it's okay to snoop around the office when your boss is a guy like Perry because then when he kisses you, you've got something to blackmail him with. Because I didn't even start to talk about the batch of photos of Perry and Bradley Sterling in their army gear doing things I'm pretty sure aren't allowed in today's modern armed forces. But maybe that will come up some other time. When I need a vacation, or a raise or something. I haven't thought about that yet.  


Questions? Comments? Feedback always appreciated.


End file.
